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Victory
for Taiwan Women
Taiwan this week passed one of the most
radical pieces of social legislation perhaps ever passed in an Asian country -
and almost nobody noticed. The blandly named Civil Code Amendment bill makes
Taiwan the first country anywhere in the world - to this reporter's knowledge -
to mandate cash payment for housework.
There was of course more, and less, to the legislation, than that. The aim of
the change in the law was really to remedy inequities in the property-holding
system that put women at a disadvantage. But it was the pay-for-housework clause
which captured the headlines.
Many in Taiwan - and they are by no means all male - think that lawmakers should
have had better things to do with their time than legislating on issues more
usually associated with cranks and the lunatic fringes of feminism.
Others, more thoughtfully, have pointed to the vagaries in the new law and
wondered how cases might be brought under it and judgments made using it, and
how the results of those judgments might be enforced.
But the new legislation marks another step in an area in which radical change
has taken place during the current government's two years in office.
Much of this change has been barely noticed because it is not politically
contentious and the object of partisan squabble. But when the humor has
subsided, there might yet be a time when the presidency of Chen Shui-bian will
be seen as a watershed for the promotion of sexual equality and the reform of a
legal system that has long left women, at home and in the workplace, as
second-class citizens.
The "pay for housework" provision is not specifically aimed at women;
it is merely that the idea of a "househusband" in Taiwan is almost
unheard of. The law says that a working spouse must pay a sum to a homemaker for
the housework he or she does, the sum to be agreed between the two spouses. This
sum is exclusively for the non-working spouse to spend as he or she pleases, and
is extra to any sum that he or she receives for household expenses. If the
couple are unable to agree upon a suitable sum to cover the value of the
housework, then they can apply to a court, which will decide the issue.
Critics of the move have said that this gives the court a far too intrusive role
in a couple's personal affairs.
Supporters of the measure argue that it is up to the couple as to whether they
take their disagreement to court in the first place, the judiciary is not
forcing itself into their lives. What they think is of greater concern is that
penalties for ignoring a court ruling in such cases were deleted from the bill
in a committee stage. Supporters of the law are therefore concerned that it
might simply create a class of "deadbeat scofflaws", working spouses
who refuse to pay the homemaker partners their "pocket money" and
ignore a court order to do so.
The new law does not only try to regulate the position of working and
stay-at-home spouses. It also stipulates that when both spouses work, their
contribution to household expenses should be in proportion to their respective
salaries. This provision has incurred a lot of criticism; most Taiwanese believe
that who contributes what to the household is a matter strictly between family
members in which the law should have no role.
But the measure is justified, say others, as are the property-related provisions
of the amended law by a new phenomenon threatening marital harmony in Taiwan,
mistresses or second wives in mainland China.
The time was when a philandering husband in Taiwan might have a fling with a bar
girl, or even keep a mistress, but the very fact that he continued to live in
the family home with his wife gave her some control. While married women's
property rights remained weak - property brought into a marriage by a woman
became her husband's to dispose of as he pleased - adultery is also a crime and
the threat of prosecution gave women some leverage over erring husbands to
ensure financial support.
Such redress is not open to a wife whose husband lives and works on the mainland
and either keeps a Chinese mistress or has bigamously married a second time. And
such cases have grown exponentially with Taiwan's enormous business investment
on the mainland. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Taiwanese companies
have factories or offices in mainland China that are headed by Taiwanese men,
usually married and separated from their families. And these are not short-term
assignments but involve stays of several years. Obviously some marriages fail.
But the real problem, and the one that the revised Civil Code was introduced to
solve, is that of husbands who strip their family of their assets to set up home
across the Taiwan Strait.
Yu Mei-nu, a lawyer and longtime women's rights activist, told a press
conference in April: "Since wives in Taiwan have few legal methods of
redress if their husbands have affairs in China, the least we can do is to keep
the property ... in Taiwan." Yu was especially concerned about the rights
of children from a bigamous mainland marriage to inherit property from the
husband's first family in Taiwan.
Another problem with the unreformed law was that in Taiwan a husband's wishes
took precedence over those of his wife in any dispute about the division of
jointly owned property and husbands were not obliged to hand over anything from
the sale of such property. The new law says that property that a spouse brings
into a marriage or acquires as an individual afterward remains his or hers
exclusively. Property that has been acquired jointly cannot be transferred
without the agreement of both parties, who can apply for a court order to
determine their relative shares in the property should they be unable to agree
themselves.
At a stroke this gives women far more control over both their own and
family-acquired property. It redresses a situation in which women were often
trapped in loveless marriages because if they walked out they would be left with
nothing at all. One women's rights advocate has called the measure "the
last step in dismantling Taiwan's traditional patriarchal system".
Certainly women's rights have been improved considerably since the current
government took office in May 2000. Earlier this year the Gender Equality Labor
law was passed, banning sexual discrimination in the workplace. In Taiwan this
has been a highly contentious issue, with women being fired from jobs for
getting pregnant and in some cases - most notoriously employees of the showpiece
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei - being forced to resign even for getting
married.
The next major step will be reform of the divorce law. Divorce is Taiwan can be
as easy as signing a contract to dissolve a marriage - if both parties are
agreeable - or almost impossible if one of the parties contests the issue. The
government wants to introduce a "no-contest" divorce that would be
allowed to proceed after three years' separation even if one of the parties
wanted to contest it.
Women's groups are worried, and once again it is mainland China that is on their
minds. Unless "separation" is better defined - perhaps as an agreement
to live separately as a result of marital problems - there is a worry that, as
Hsu Chia-ching, secretary general of the Taiwan Women's League, told a press
conference this week, "Taiwanese businessmen based in China could ditch
their Taiwanese spouses easily in order to marry their Chinese
girlfriends." The issue gives a whole new dimension to the problems of
cross-Strait links.
- by Laurence Eyton Asia
Times 11 June 2002
Taiwan men may have to pay wives for
housework
A controversial Bill, seeking to guarantee homemakers an income, has come in for
sharp criticism
TAIPEI - Taiwanese husbands may have to pay
their wives for managing the household if a proposed legislation to guarantee
full-time homemakers a fixed income is approved.
The controversial Bill passed its first
reading on Wednesday, after 12 years of lobbying by women's groups here,
sparking an outcry from Taiwanese men and women alike.
'I wash the dishes at home, so who is going
to pay me for that?' asked one man during a call-in television programme.
Several of the women who called in were also
against the idea, as they thought it should be a private matter between husbands
and wives, and that the law, if passed, could create marital conflict.
A poll by online news portal ETtoday.com
showed that 65.87 per cent of 1,052 respondents were against the idea while only
25.28 per cent were for it.
Taiwanese were particularly critical of what
they saw as the attachment of monetary value to household chores, which was
usually shared among family members.
Ms Cho Wan-hsia, 46, a housewife, told The
Straits Times that she was against the legislation because household chores
should be everyone's responsibility.
'I've taught my children I'm not their
servant, and that it is their responsibility to clean their own rooms and wash
their own dishes. To put a monetary value on such tasks is just too ridiculous,'
she said.
A United Evening News editorial yesterday
warned that if the giver was reluctant, the Bill could be a double-edged sword,
becoming the terminator of a marriage.
Ms Tien Ting-fang, of the Awakening
Foundation that had lobbied for the Bill, argued that it was meant to dignify
housewives' work.
'Because they have no income of their own,
their status in the home is low.'
The women's groups hope that the status of
women would be raised by making husbands give their homemaker wives an allowance
to spend as they wish.
Then they would not have to ask their
husbands' permission to give red packets to their parents on their birthdays.
The Bill acknowledges that the homemaker has
contributed to her husband's income. But it was never intended to place monetary
value on each item of work done as the housewife is not a maid in the house.
Under its provision, the allowance is to be
paid out of disposable income after deduction of household and other expenses.
The amount is to be negotiated between husband and wife.
The women's groups are unhappy with the Bill
that was drawn up, as it did not state what would happen should there be
disputes.
It also did not specify that only those who
contributed to the household could claim the allowance. This means that if the
man is a gambler who refuses to work, he can claim this allowance from his
working wife.
Ms Tien said her organisation would lobby for
improvements to the Bill before the second reading.
This Bill was part of an ongoing revision of
Taiwan's civil code that also saw the tabling of another Bill that seeks to
protect the assets of a spouse against improper use by the other spouse.
- The primary intent of the latter was to
prevent Taiwanese businessmen from keeping lovers and squandering their
assets while working in China. -
2002 May 18 By Goh Sui Noi Singapore
Straits Times
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